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Friday, November 19, 2010

Fun with Rectangles

I've been thinking a lot lately about my favorite design tricks, and my conclusion from all this thinking is that using shapes (squares, rectangles, or circles) as key design elements makes me very happy. You can arrange them in tidy grids or rows, you can get whimsically asymmetrical with them, you can pop or not pop them, or you can use one all by its lonesome for big impact.

So, when I decided I needed some birthday cards, I pulled out SU's Stem Silhouettes and Garden Silhouettes and played around with putting the images on shapes.. These two cards are what happened.

*squeal*

Same thing, different colors:

The rectangles are 2 1/8" x 1 1/2" and are, of course, popped up on dimensionals. I stamped each image in a light color first, then overstamped (but off-set) again with a darker shade of the same color. Really, you could just use a dark ink, stamp once, huff on the stamp, then stamp it again. But I had the ink colors so I used them. I stamped the sentiment justified right in gray because black looked wayyyyy too stark and dark. All inks are Memento.

I thoroughly enjoy experimenting and playing around and trying out new things, new products, new styles. But this crisp, clean, colorfully white look is more me than any other.

Up tomorrow, a Christmas card with circles...oh how I love my punches!

45 comments:

Oh what perfect pleasure! Nothing to mask. Nothing to fussy-cut. Nothing to sponge. Nothing to emboss. And I KNOW those particular stamps produce crisp images. I can hardly wait until daylight to try this.

Wow, Susan, I love it when you play around with your ideas. Both these cards are lovely. I love the placement of everything, the double-stamping, and that the colors just jump out at you. What I'm REALLY excited about is that I have these stamp sets and can completely copy you! And trust me, I will! I love these cards.

squeal! right with you! i totally agree, these look really great. just so pretty, and i am happy for you. i love stamping, even tho i am pitiful at it, so i love looking at your work to keep me motivated, thank you for sharing.

Thank you so much for sharing this card - it's beautiful! I needed a card for my friends mom who is near the end of life and I was struggling. Your card was the inspiration I needed. I used Pocket Silhouettes, and backed each frame w/ the stamped color card stock. Sentiment was from Artfully Asian - 'Each day provides its own gifts'. I would not have come up w/ that w/o your example. Thank you!

I found these cards on Pinterest and just had to come looking. I was looking around on your blog and WOW! You have an amazing eye for proportions and colors, I'm just green with envy! I love CAS but can't pull it off ecause I chicken out and have to add something... Anyways, this blog will gor into my google reader so I won't miss a thing. Also I love your sense of humor, I usually just look at the pretty pictures while blog hopping but I'll read and enjoy this one :)

Thanks for the inspiration! (and I will never look at pears the sama way again)